


Like the Universe

by EgregiousDerp



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: 'My Delinquient is Screwing Your Honor Student', (BUT WILL IT BE?), (Maybe "Sensory Issues Chirrut" is fairer), (OR WERE THEY?), All Is As The Force Wills It, All the Dad Angst, Ambiguously Spectrum!Chirrut again?, And then even more dad angst, Baze is a quieter mess with a big gun, Baze shoots from the heart, Bullshit Buddhism, Chirrut is a mess with a big smile, Chirrut shoots from the hip, I couldn't come up with a better euphemism if I tried, Just to warn you I mean, M/M, Mutual Rescue, Possibly Mistaken Identity, Some Alchohol stuff in here, Some Awkward Porn With Overstim from the Start, Somebody please help Baze Malbus, This honestly could be very terrible, but like...tertiary force-sensitivity?, force Sensitive Chirrut & Baze, that almost-AU where they aren't Childhood BFFs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:45:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9911864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EgregiousDerp/pseuds/EgregiousDerp
Summary: It's the business of Baze Malbus to know where things are and what they should be, to keep moving, so as to outpace his failures, and to trust nothing but Luck, which plays no favorites, and offers a blank slate every time.When he meets Chirrut Îmwe he does not know him.This too, is Luck.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I want to say I have no idea how this happened, because here I was, right in the middle of talking to a buddy like,
> 
> "I wrote some more spiritassassin!"
> 
> And Vee turns to me all, "aah, I'm just not sure I'm ready for porn of them. They're so wholesome, you know?"
> 
> "Oh. Oh yeah. I see what you mean."
> 
> And to my repulsed astonishment, the porn sections just kept growing.
> 
> What I'm trying to say is...
> 
> If you're under the impression I still have dignity, I am very sorry.
> 
> This is for Vee.  
> Who probably still can't read it.
> 
> And for every person I've babbled excitedly to about later plot points whose reaction was an aghast SKUUN, NO. (Stahp and Limes to name a few.)
> 
> I'm glad some of you still have a conscience.

__

"Sara narrowed her eyes in a tight line. 'Just like the universe.'

'I don't know much about the universe,' Tsukuru said. 'But for us it was very important. We had to protect the special chemistry that had developed among us. Like protecting a lit match, keeping it from blowing out in the wind.'

'Chemistry?'

'The power that happened to arise from that point. Something that could never be reproduced.'

\-- Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

-o-O-o-

When the blind man comes it's with a stifled noise, small, like he's hurt him, torn some fragile thread between them irreparably, so all Baze can do is stand still, in silence, a spurt of hot liquid cooling on his knuckles, Chirrut's forehead shuddering against his, his robes hiked up around his waist and his legs hooked around Baze's middle, two fingers still buried deep in the hot, shivering, clenching heat of him.

He'd expected something else, Baze thinks from a strange place of detachment.

Something other than this silence, this mostly-clothed shivering against one another in the heartless air of Chirrut's rented residence, with something or someone still screaming and thumping through the ceiling above them. 

Outside he hears raucous laughter and the smash of a bottle, oddly irritated that it makes this feel so much less private, that it would somehow be different if the other man's hand was around the back of his neck, holding him here, doing something other than just bracing himself. As if Baze could wrap himself up inside this other person even just for a few minutes and it would all be fine.

Baze remains still when Chirrut recovers, twisting out of his arms, pulling himself out from under him, stumbling away toward the corner that serves as his refresher.

Wordlessly, Chirrut draws the ragged curtain back behind him.

Baze remains still as he hears the splashing of liquid into a basin, a feverish murmuring. Secretly familiar cadences that cut deep at something in him.

He recognizes the pattern without even hearing the words, knows on a gut level what Chirrut is praying.

It dawns on him what he's done, what, in particular, he _may_ have done, as he's absently wiping off his fingers, in a heavy settling of guilt.

There is no temple any longer.

There are no guardians.

Where there is no temple, there are no sins. There are no bylaws to be broken. No guidances, and no elders to frown down on them with disapproval about attachments and the corruptions of the temporary world.

The disappointments of the watching dead should not concern him.

(But still-

 _But still._ )

\--------

_He was so good at this-_

Once.

\--------

Chirrut had seemed to know, though, he reflects in his wash of guilt.

He seemed to have chosen this day of all their days beneath the stars to pull Baze down to him by the hair and kiss him, midway through Baze telling him of the nebula on the horizon, the low curve of planet-dawn gleaming low and red behind it-

This day.

Where Chirrut's mouth was so warm and gentle beneath the cold, clear sky his poor heart leapt like it hadn't since he'd lost his faith and sworn to trust only the things he could touch and try to save with his own two hands.

It had seemed like Chirrut Îmwe was within his grasp, the questions of what they were to one another, and what purpose he'd brought him here for night after night, presumably, to tell him of the stars, all resolved in a moment.

It had seemed like Chirrut had made a choice, with that quick, joyous knife-smile of his, with the grinned words Baze could almost taste, sick with besotting as he was.

Chirrut, who teased, and smiled, and feared nothing.

_You're keeping me out of trouble._

Baze, of course, despaired privately in the glow of that smile, that statement, but thought it better than his own jumble of tamped-down emotions. Many of which had already been churned up from unknown places by Chirrut Îmwe like a blind fish hunting on the bottom of a pool, leaving muddied waters wherever it went.

He had seen such a thing once, seen the bulbous pupilless eyes and the feelers, the rotating fans of its fins, heard the lesson on the ways of the force as the creature swept about slowly in the pool for minutes on end before lurching violently into the silt of the bottom of its pool, gulping, biting, savage where it had once been graceful, gone before he'd realized, and before the lecture-master had finished his parable, vanished into the deep shadows of the rocks.

Baze was tired. Heartsick. More weary than anyone had any right to be in a little over three decades, even if he was closer now to four.

Even naming the stars felt like a physical weight pressing down on him as constantly as the pack on his back, the armor sealed around him: a mudprawn cracking slightly in the mouth of a fish.

(But Chirrut's mouth was soft...so soft... and he was so tired.)

He'd thought--digging his fingers into the underside of Chirrut's jaw like the lip of a dish--nothing of the force. Or of destiny. Put those things forcibly from his mind with the same technique he'd once used to empty for meditation. He'd only thought that maybe after all he didn't have to be so lost. Hoped it, as he seized the other man by the face, gazing into the unrepentant expression, the wandering blackless eyes, and lazy smile like a pool.

He chose to kiss Chirrut back under the cold light of the stars.

\--------

He thinks now, in the weird, ambient noise and half-darkness, of the mundanity of _choice_.

The chance of it.

It occurs to him like a wayward moment of enlightenment in a meditation just how little they might have been to one another but for luck, for a flip of a coin, a roll of the dice, a card changing face and suit within a hand, fitting into something bigger.

\--------

Chirrut had been nothing more than a smiling novelty once--a blind man peddling games of chance by the side of the road, one of any number of others in the Holy City.

And he, in his own way, had been less: A plodding failure in armor.

Impossible to tell amidst all the lost and found which of these either of them might be.

He might have so easily avoided this path.

They both might have.

He does not remember Chirrut's first calling words, only that they failed to move him, to interest him, washed over him like background noise from any other number of street vendors and miscreants.

He might have left and never met him at all, had Chirrut not laughed at his back, calling loudly to him in his brash, easy way.

"Brave indeed, is the man who carries a great weapon and yet flees from a test of skill against a blind beggar."

Baze stopped.

"Yes, you. Or do you allow the thing on your back to speak for you?"

The beggar was grinning, blackless eyes staring off into space.

"Does _it_ have the tongue and you are its vessel?"

Baze turned back to him, stumping along under the weight of his suit, the weaponry that might one day be enough to make a difference. The unspoken hours of work creating it--as intensive as his seventh duan had once been, but with no chants cast over it, nothing but sweat and intensive focus. It was fitting that his new work have a profane weapon to suit it.

He'd been privately irritated by the carefree brightness of the other man's smile, the milky films of his eyes that he'd thought might be fake at the time, might be a gimmick of technology. Baze had seen many such things off-world: expensive modifications that tracked heat or let one see in the dark. Advantage hidden within the appearance of disadvantage.

He'd chafed slightly at the reminder of the deliberate backwater of his own world now, though Jedha was in his bones, his blood. Jedha was his home. Weren't his parents' bones and their parents' bones before them buried in the Holy City, waiting to be reborn in the hearts of stars, in the fingers of Kyber in the caverns?

...All stolen, of course, all _weaponized_ by the Imperials.

Violation upon desecration.

Nothing was sacred to the empire.

He too, had once been sacred, after all.

"Oh? There you are. What's your name, traveler?" The beggar asked brightly, rocking slightly, easily on his haunches.

Baze just scowled, weighing if he should even waste the words.

"...Whatever you want, I don't care."

the beggar laughed at him again, his teeth much too white and even, Baze decided, his laughter much too infectious and merry. A con. He mistrusted him to his very bones at the start.

"That's a mouthful," the man said. Predictable, "But I sense you've already decided your path."

"I've decided there is no glory in stealing a blind man's supper," Baze rasped, "no matter what he wishes."

"Ah," the man grinned, "Many have tried to outmatch me. But the force is my ally, and I am one with the Force. Do you think you are the one it will choose to favor over me?"

Baze's belly did a funny twist then and there, settling heavily in him in recognition at the phrasing. 

Catching himself.

He had ceased believing in the force a long time ago. Just as he'd ceased to be a guardian. 

"Are you more beloved of the force of others than I?" Chirrut asked, grinning like a man who'd marked every card.

"...Luck," Baze barked after some hesitation, "You mean luck. That is all there is. And Luck plays no favorites."

Luck dealt a clean slate with every hand, purely at random, without order or reason. Luck was _fair_. Unlike the force, which lied and abandoned and chose to serve only some and ignore others.

"Says the one who has not felt its gentle smile upon him," Grinned the other man, his good cheer positively offensive. Almost as much as the birdlike tilt of his head. 

Baze forced his fingers to untighten, surprised by the bubbling of his own annoyance.

"What is your game, you blind fool?" He'd asked anyway, unsettled and off-balance.

Chirrut only grinned harder, like he'd been given a compliment, raising three rough bowls and a stone.

His game was Following the Stone.

Baze had almost left then and there.

Following the stone had been one of the first tests of guardianship when he was a boy. A test of intuition. A test for _children_.

He didn't listen as Chirrut explained the simplicity of guessing which bowl held the stone. Only nodded very very slightly.

No proper guardian played the game as Chirrut did, of course.

He moved like a snake from the start.

Baze had by then known many snakes in sentient form, of course. People no less insidious in venom and reactivity.

Skill or no, there was still something oddly satisfying in watching the street man's grin falter as he guessed the location of the stone each time, as easily as when he was a boy, following with more than his eyes.

It was astonishingly easy to settle back in to that old talent, like it had been waiting for him-

(No. That would be Luck. _Intuition._ These were things anyone could have. Fair things.)

Whatever the cause, he'd still enjoyed the pucker of the frown starting between the blind man's brows, the twist of his head as though to listen to him that was Chirrut's now well-known equivalent of peering at something rare and puzzling, the small crowd gathering around them to laugh and hoot at yet another diversion.

Chirrut was a superb showman for a man who couldn't see, of course. He was quick as water. Baze could see him as a pickpocket. A thief. Many things. He was showy, smiled well, probably did well for himself. The crowd nonetheless seemed just as ready and eager to laugh at the prospect of him being outmatched as not, which made him more a man who lived off the whims of mercy and not of genuine rooting care. Baze had learned the difference, took it in silently.

"The force of others serves you well," Chirrut murmured, a note of surprise in his voice.

"No," Baze corrected quietly, knowing otherwise with unshakeable certainty, a spooking like someone had walked over his grave or had brushed the back of his neck in the dark, "Bad luck is bad luck." He gave a jut of his chin, " _Again_."

The blind man made a noncommittal noise and sped his motions.

Baze didn't have to watch him move to know what he intended to do, which was just as well because the eye couldn't follow the blind man's motions.

He never had.

 _Luck_ , he thought, denying hard as Chirrut slammed down the final bowl. Luck and a gut knowledge of people.

"Hm?" The man inclined his head, tilting one ear to Baze.

"I said nothing."

Baze raised a hand to the other's mouth, caught the flinch of aborted violence, the flash of anger hidden in his steadiness.

He was blind, Baze realized at the tension. Really blind, his blue-filmed eyes narrowing.

Baze hesitated for a second, some wash of sympathy, some sorrow flitting deep inside him.

Once the unfortunates would have been the property of the temple of Kyber, would have had their bowls filled by the gardens of the monks, the nourishing flavorless starches and roots of the temple. In another time his hands would have blessed this man, would have filled the mouth he touched with food.

The old mantra sits on his tongue out of habit, forced down by his anger, his confused well of pity.

"Here," he replied, tapping the man's lips with a thumb, making sure to keep it gentle, almost apologetic, noting the straightness of his profile, the striking, narrow face, and filmed-over blue of his eyes, the sun-weathered bronzing of his features. The almost imperceptible curve to the underside of his chin where his tongue was pressing a stone to the roof of his mouth.

"You've hidden it in the fourth bowl this time," Baze said.

Chirrut's whole face smoothed over for a moment, while the crowd hissed and chortled. But only for a moment before he laughed hard and bright, sightless eyes crinkling with something like delight as he spat the wet stone into Baze's palm and the handful of gathered beings howled with laughter, cheering like they were folk heroes in showdown, a two-man act.

It wasn't Kyber, Baze knew at a touch.

The real test was conducted with Kyber, with quick hands and smiles, the force calling to itself within the chosen. The real test only used the bowls.

No guardian he'd ever seen had ever handled the test with such showmanship, though, he reflected, turning the wet stone in his fingers.

But no guardian would be blind.

Baze turned the conundrum over like the wet stone in his fingers.

He was surprised at the time that the blind man hadn't set out his bowl after that to make money off the exchange, pretending it was all for that benefit, and planned.

Baze was just surprised today that he hadn't swallowed the stone down.

Chirrut could be incredibly spiteful when he chose to be, after all.

"The force of others is with you. Take your winnings with my blessing," Chirrut said, leaning back into the shade of the building, a puzzling little smile to his lips.

Baze peered at him. Stayed where he was, looking the other over, noting the tilt of his head, listening as the crowd dispersed, denied a continuing spectacle.

He'd denied the force of others a long time ago.

He still couldn't deny that what sat before him in the shade was a guardian- (couldn't be a _true_ guardian. Not with glaring imperfection gazing out of his impassive, young face-)

Chirrut's head swiveled, turning back and forth, frowning very slightly.

Baze stared openly, frowning.

Though he had never seen such a deft and deceptive one, he _was_ a Guardian. There was no mistaking it. Baze tried to keep the amazement out of his face for the benefit of anyone else. It wasn't difficult. He had a good Sabaac face. A stoic countenance. A gruff voice. It fooled everyone.

"...I know you're there. You haven't gone," Chirrut said after a handful of minutes, his voice a little too loud without a crowd.

"I said it before. It was never my intention to rob a blind man of his dinner."

Chirrut peered at the ground, leveled a smile at the sky.

"Hunger has been a good companion of mine on many nights. I do not fear her. She keeps me humble."

Baze privately thought by the cheekiness of the man's grin, its calculated roguishness, that very few things could ever keep such a man humble. Even in his surroundings.

He passed a hand in front of the other's face. Chirrut didn't react. (He could have. Easily. He knows this now.)

"I insist," Baze muttered.

Again a flicker of surprising anger from Chirrut, a snap of the gnarled wooden staff he swept out in front of him, Baze's hand reaching for his gun, pausing when he didn't attack.

"As do _I_ ," Chirrut replied, feeling about on the tabletop for the meager sack of credits.

"A trade, then," Baze murmured, catching his fingers with one hand. "Your name, guardian, and you can keep your dinner."

No sooner had he spoken than motion flurried at him. The man was quick as a snake at this, too, turning his weight against him, his grip bruising and brutally efficient.

Baze, off-balanced by his equipment, his repeater, the battery packs for it, fell. _Hard_.

Chirrut leaned heavily on his staff, body tilted towards him, countenance like thunder.

"There _are_ no _guardians_ here."

He spoke it with an emphasis on every word, a thump of his stick.

Baze grunted, shifting around to right himself with the heaviness of his power cell on his back throwing off his center. He was irritated he'd frozen as he had. The blind man could have done anything to him. _Foolish._ He'd held back.

"Go in peace. With your winnings. May the force of others be with you."

All the laughter was gone from the beggar's voice, replaced with something steely, some fine thread of barely restrained violence.

" _Fine_ ," Baze snapped back.

He was covered in dust when he staggered to his feet, thoroughly irritated and humiliated rather than hurt. He didn't touch the pouch.

Halfway to the edge of the square the little purse landed at his feet with a clink of credits.

"If it really bothers you, you can buy me a drink, of course," the blind man called, all the anger gone from his voice again, nothing but a lilt of easy laughter just under the surface.

Baze turned slowly. His suit still new enough that he couldn't really turn his head, hadn't quite compensated with his motions. Considered him.

The man was grinning again, even teeth, a line of bone-pink gum above it. 

"...I don't buy drinks for nameless fools who cheat at street games," Baze replied, frowning, turning away.

" _Hoh!_ I do not cheat," Chirrut laughed after him, "Anyone with the eyes to see can follow where I put that stone."

There was something in the laughter there he didn't want to rise to. So Baze grunted, ignored it, stepped around the purse while the blind man continued quickly.

"The name of Chirrut Îmwe is not worth any coin. It will bring you no glory, bounty hunter."

Baze paused.

Chirrut Îmwe was _not_ a name he knew.

He should have.

It bothered him more than he could say.

There were many guardians in the temple. Many names. Many more than he'd ever bothered to learn. Many of them lost for good, but he should have known someone so skillful.

Baze turned again, peering at the blind man's straight features, trying to determine an age, an origin.

"...I'm no bounty hunter," he settled for, the words coming out strangely flat.

Chirrut laughed at him. 

"You move like one and act like there's something wrong with you. What else could you possibly be?"

Baze cocked his gun pointedly to see if he would flinch. The monk just tilted his head, smile falling.

Baze held his hands there for a moment, then eased his fingers off.

"I'm a _protector._ "

Chirrut's chin tipped upwards, seemingly discerning truth in that statement because he just looked amused, unimpressed.

"Mm. And a man who needs another name for what he does _definitely_ has something wrong with him. Is that what they call you? 'Protector?'" There was laughter in the way he said it, like a private joke.

Baze was irritated already that he'd let this man get to him.

"It's what _I_ call me."

He didn't pick up the purse, stumping past it.

Chirrut's laughter followed him, bright and lively, "Buy me a _drink_ , protector, and I will tell you your future. A pretty girl, here, in the city, and years of comfort in her arms."

"I don't need lies or advice from a streetside charlatan," Baze grumbled, adding over his shoulder, "Save your coin and get yourself off this rock! There's nothing here!"

The blind man's only answer was laughter, this time a little mean, a bit derisive. Because after all who could leave Jedha? Jedha was in your bones. Hadn't even Baze returned, though the place was nothing but hard stone and ghosts to him?

And yet...

Hadn't he still found himself at a meal stall within minutes, still fuming? Fuming harder when the man had been gone without a trace when he'd returned, so he'd felt doubly foolish for bothering, for feeling guilty in the slightest with his plenty?

Chirrut had been like that even then, getting at some part of him, hooking him in.

And he's never forgotten that one day he might still leave him with nothing just so easily.

\--------

And yet, hadn't Chirrut given? 

Even though he'd had nothing, hadn't he given to him of his time? Hadn't he gifted him with the intimacy of his warm breath in his ear beneath the stars?

Hadn't he given him the gift of his friendship? His company? As easily as though they were fruits from a garden plucked in promise, sure to bear more than any one man could eat.

Hadn't these been undeserved things?

How could he grieve to have a gift taken away when it had been given in charity, like he was the beggar with the bowl and Chirrut the man of substance?

(When he began to depend on it, that was how. When it was a matter of survival.)

\--------

Friendship, he'd thought, friendship was... _something._ In his line of work it was as close to a proof of honor as one could get sometimes. 

Maybe it was even close enough to what Baze wanted, because it was better than nothing and a blind man at least couldn't judge him for the blood he'd painted his hands with in an attempt to balance his groundless anger with his need to do something.

And since he couldn't seem to mind the way all his heart told him he should stay as far away from a guardian as possible, not get dragged back into anything close to the source of his pain, to the laughter across the square, the calling voice like a needle to a magnet, maybe, just maybe, it was enough.

\--------

(It was too much. Too much-)

\--------

" _Protector!_ You're looking well!"

The grin was no less roguish, astonishingly even, and unrepentant the second time around, the clouded eyes still not quite fixed on him.

Baze, covered in sweat and still smelling of blaster scorch from a job gone far south, a little body wrapped in a blanket, cradled over his shoulder still, just fumed at the voice, heart heavy with thunderous anger and shame.

"And how would you know, you blind fool?" He yelled back, rough-voiced.

Chirrut laughed hard, refusing to rise to the goad.

"Ah. For that secret you must pay!"

He grinned at his own joke before adding, 

"Did you enjoy that drink I bought you, Protector?" Another laugh, "Did it take some of that seriousness out?"

Baze glared at him in fury. Stumped forward, watched the dark head cock sideways, the flicker of his brows drawing together, the birdlike tilt of his head. The ease of his smile.

"You're carrying something today. Some extra burden."

His voice was almost kindly, which was the thing, the thing which had finally snapped the thread of Baze's patience.

"My _seriousness_!"

Baze slammed the body down on the charletan's little table so the bowls jumped.

Chirrut caught them without looking before they shattered on the rock of the street. His frown was more pronounced. He didn't flinch, however, passing a hand along the rough fabric, resting it over the head of the corpse, holding it there for a moment. He wasn't afraid, wasn't offended. Offered no apology for his disappearance, just...a rolling twist of his head, an opening of his jaw in a shuddering breath.

"...She died in pain..." He said quietly, sightless eyes peering out, hands passing over the bundle, the blue of his eyes eerie, "through no fault of yours, though."

"You know _nothing_ ," Baze snapped, wanting to snatch the bundle back, suddenly, since it failed to produce its desired effect, ashamed now, to add one last indignity to the charge he was supposed to be looking after. The swell of his grief and the mountain of his failure.

"I know the force," Chirrut replied, almost reasonably. Softer. His hand cradled the back of the head of the little bundle, "I know this one...bears no darkness towards you."

Baze pulled the body away quickly, hoisting it back over his shoulder like a prone Tomuon Lamb before the blind man could raise his hands from it, seething and unable to unleash the brunt of it on something that didn't deserve such a pent in and complex vintage, teeth grinding, gritting so hard his jaw ached.

"...You guardians would say anything to get what you want and to keep it," Baze spat at him instead.

The blind man's brow furrowed hard as Baze stumped off.

"She scratched his face!" Chirrut yelled after him, "You can start with that!"

" _I don't need your help!_ " Baze screamed back, the words ripping at his throat, making it hurt, coming out harder than he meant.

Chirrut said something he didn't catch, something soft, lost to the milling of the crowd, to the people flinching hard out of his way.

\--------

It had somehow only surprised him a little when he'd found himself being beaten in an alleyway pursuing the killer, and only after finding his very informant as Chirrut Îmwe said: with a scratched face.

 _Occupational hazard_ , he'd thought drily.

And a lucky guess from a man who could have been in on it.

(Although part of him knew, in that indescribable way that Chirrut Îmwe wasn't in on it, even as he hated himself for wanting to believe in honor in a place like this. Honor. Not the force telling him anything.)

The old him would have been infuriated, incredulous. How could one chosen by the Force be subject to humiliation? To suffering?

The new him accepted the pain, understood there was no Force deciding the worthy from the unworthy and bestowing gifts upon the righteous and curses upon the terrible. Luck rolled the dice, a new slate every time, a fair chance.

Some days, children died.

Other days, good men.

Other days still, evil men.

There were four dead men at his feet, perhaps wicked, perhaps simply hired, and a good eight kicking at him, knocking him down under the weight of his own armor. Blood in his teeth, a pool of vomit under his cheek from a particularly vicious blow to the gut.

Baze was a good fighter. Sure-footed and solid. He could take a hit.

Not in his suit, though, off-balance, and angry. He was losing. Would lose. Had resigned himself to it in a way. His weapons were enough for an army, but there were homes nearby. Sleeping families. The weight of collateral damage being held against his own life would have been far too much for him after everything else.

He knew better now.

He wouldn't push that luck.

He couldn't fight that way just for himself, and so he would die.

At least...he'd thought as much, roiling under a hail of boots.

At least he would die with his eyes open. On the Jedhan soil of his fathers.

This was luck.

One could not argue or plea with something as cold and fair as luck as one could entice the force, manipulate it, be consumed by it...

"Let him go!" A voice barked.

Baze recognized the tapping of the stick, the odd, straight stance of the beggar, incredulous, and nearly blind himself through his swollen eyes.

"Let him go in peace," the blind man said more lazily.

Baze sputtered, too winded to tell the fool to get going-

He didn't get a chance.

Someone screamed _Get Him!_ But Chirrut... Chirrut was already moving

Chirrut went from still to a blur of motion as a bolt hissed through the air and the man dodged it with uncanny speed.

Movement like that, that kind of mastery was at least seventh rank, Baze thought in astonishment, watching him move, the darkness of the train of his robe, and the unseen, thick, meaty noise of a stick hitting flesh. The snap of bones, the pulping of meat...heavy noises as one after the other the men fell in brief staccato bursts of light and far more deadly darkness.

He should have _known_ a guardian of the seventh rank. Those were few. Especially so young.

He came up with nothing nonetheless, slightly frustrated.

It was his _business_ to know where things were.

Even he was having trouble knowing where Chirrut Îmwe was, let alone where he had been.

For a long moment there was silence.

Chirrut wasn't even breathing hard when he finished, slightly bowed.

He was completely different in a fight, wholly focused...

Baze swallowed a mouthful of blood, feeling for loose teeth with his tongue.

"What the Hell are you doing here?" Baze wheezed after he caught his wind back into the silence of the alleyway.

" _You're welcome_ ," Chirrut corrected with a sigh, one milky blue eye catching a hollow of street light as he leaned over his staff, settling heavily, tiredly onto the back of one of the fallen men like it was a curb.

Baze, despite himself, laughed, wheezing, spitting a gob of blood through his teeth, through the hurt of his broken ribs and throbbing head.

His life was a joke.

Chirrut's teeth gleamed white in the streetlight in response.

"You're not- You're not as harmless as you look, I see," Baze added.

Chirrut made a rude noise in response, and grinned like a predator.

"I don't know if you noticed but I have trouble seeing anything, much less how ferociously handsome I look saving your life."

Baze laughed until it hurt and dissolved into a dry, weak cough against the pain of his ribs. He didn't bother replying, certain the flirtation was habit. Banter. He focused instead on getting up.

Chirrut offered him the end of his staff like he could sense it.

Baze took it. 

\------

Six more men came for Chirrut in his stall the next day, as he smiled and smiled, swindling some credulous widow with news from the world of spirits, which according to him appeared only to the truly force-faithful.

Baze was in the archway behind him, ready for them.

He knew where to aim, as easily as he knew where to find a stone beneath a bowl, even around the throbbing of his broken nose, and with his eyes all swollen up into puffy slits.

Chirrut grimaced, rubbing his ear.

"Are you trying to deafen me, too?"

"You're welcome," Baze replied, lowering his gun with some difficulty, limping to him.

Chirrut's head cocked to follow his motion with one ear. He caught the flask of sour tea Baze meant to drop into his lap before it could even touch the fabric of his knees, still for a moment after.

Chirrut frowned, sniffed at the outside of the flask like he'd done nothing at all.

"What's this?"

Chirrut peered up towards the sky, scowling. His eyes were blue, Baze noticed. Around the edges. White towards the centers.

"A drink."

He dropped a packet of curd to follow, and a small loaf of dark mealbread the size and density of the other man's fist.

Chirrut caught each seemingly without effort, chilling Baze to his core.

He too knew where things were. Without eyes.

Somehow it only really clicked seeing it like that--too many times in a row for it to be chalked up to mere luck.

Guardians were many and varied in their abilities once. Some entered their vows on nothing but luck. Others, on skill. Baze himself had been rare, entering Knowing.

It was gut-wrenching to see such awareness, such talent on par with his own rare gifts displayed so casually.

 _Who are you?_ Baze thought.

"And these?" Chirrut asked, sniffing, frowning, then sniffing more deeply at the loaf, "Bread?"

"Breakfast," Baze rasped.

Chirrut blinked once, useless eyes wide, before his whole face scrunched up in a bark of laughter.

" _That's_ not what this is," he chided. "This is an audacious proposition."

Baze stared, taken aback.

"It's...not..."

"You're going to start a friendship if you're not careful," Chirrut chided, beaming like the sun itself, "You _hate_ those, don't you?"

Baze scowled at having been wound up again, pushed past it because this was important.

"No." He said, curling his fingers into a fist, "That's not it. I...owe you a debt." He muttered.

Chirrut snorted and waved a hand.

"I do," Baze insisted, "I...didn't believe you."

"The force was with us," Chirrut says easily, ignoring the shaking of Baze's throbbing head.

"I don't need to know _how_ you did it," He said quietly, surprising them both when he squeezed Chirrut's shoulder. Finding it more solid in his grip than he expected, he didn't linger, remembering the ease of the brutality in the darkness, the quickness of it, motionless as Chirrut was.

"You...did what you did." Baze said quietly, struggling with the words.

Chirrut shrugged.

"You didn't have to," Baze's voice pitched even softer.

Chirrut didn't speak, rotated the touched shoulder as though to shake off the sensation, and tore into the bread with his teeth, barely chewing. He swallowed his food like an animal, with his head tipped back. Where the Hell was he raised?

Dawning realization: oh. He was hungry.

Baze guiltily wished he'd brought him more, his hands feeling oddly empty.

" _I_ don't need a protector," the blind man muttered finally around his food, craning his neck around to pitch the words back at him.

Baze snorted, settling heavily, and painfully into the shade of the building behind him.

"I _don't_." Chirrut insisted, muffled around the bread. Unbelievable. He was scooping up the curd with his fingers, licking it off his hands, with no regard for how it looked.

Chirrut held up the flask.

"I do need something stronger than this, though."

"Then get it yourself you blind fool." Baze grunted, knowing in his bones that if he got up Chirrut would disappear and doubtless find some fresh trouble.

The blind man grinned again, white curds stuck in his teeth, like the insult pleased him.

"You would _allow me_ to leave when I might be attacked again?"

"I would find you," Baze rumbled, throbbing eyes already closed as Chirrut gulped noisily at his tea. A handful of minutes and the meal had disappeared into him.

Chirrut was quiet for a long moment.

He made a noise through his nose, not quite agreement but not quite argument.

"May the force of others be with you!" He called to one passer-by then another, the blessing like a mantra, for hours and hours. He didn't leave. 

Baze dozed against the stones, looping in and out of consciousness to the throb of his bruised face and the sound of the man's voice.

He dreamed of caves lined with crystal, and of a single point of brightness calling to him in the darkness, whispering to him.

He woke to a nudge at his boot, catching, disoriented, at the dropping bottle. Baze squinted up at Chirrut.

"Your roaring belly is scaring off my customers," Chirrut said, carelessly insolent. Matter-of-fact.

Baze scowled.

"And what service does a blind beggar offer, to have 'customers'?"

"Spirited advice in trying times," Chirrut offered with a spectacular smile, "And morale to those who want something to compare to favorably: 'Ah yes, my wife may be sleeping with the butcher but at least I'm not a blind beggar grinning stupidly at the side of the road.'"

Baze snorted and unstoppered the bottle, wrinkling his nose at the odor.

"And what advice do you offer such a proud fool?"

"The most ancient wisdom: that such a tight and pompous ass could certainly steal back the butcher's affections for himself."

Baze choked, coughed on the drink. It burned his nose and he squinted at it.

"Empty Night, what _is_ this?"

Chirrut laughed hard.

"A strong man such as you, cannot handle a simple drink?"

"My stomach was growling, and you set out to poison me?"

Chirrut snorted, and kicked the underside of his boot again, taking the bottle from him, the white of his teeth gleaming near the lip of the flask.

"As the great sages say, 'The Path of Certainty is to Leave No Task to Others.'"

Baze could think of a different translation to that koan, one he'd heard in the mouth of a Corellian smuggler, _You want something done right, you do it yourself._

"Smother me in my sleep next time," Baze grumbled, gagging slightly. If he was dead he wouldn't have to deal with the aftertaste.

"Mm. But you look so _precious_ lying there, sleeping through my advice."

"I do n-" Baze stopped. Squinted at him.

Chirrut gave a bright whoop of laughter that cut through the noise of the market, dodging easily as Baze swiped for his ankles.

"Little _shit_ ," He muttered, trying not to smile.

"Gaping bunghole," Chirrut replied, not the slightest bit daunted, like it was all just conversation, so Baze actually did have to stifle a laugh.

Chirrut's sightless face turned.

"Oh? You think that's funny?"

"I do. How would you know?" Baze muttered, unfolding two ration bars from one of the pockets of his suit.

Chirrut put a hand to his mouth, feigning shock.

"You _question_ my knowledge of bungholes?"

"Shut _up_ , Îmwe," Baze muttered, more amused than tired, tapping the back of the blind man's hand with the ration bar. The easy way Chirrr took even the most blatant disrespect was oddly comforting. It should have annoyed him. It didn't.

Chirrut frowned for a moment, feeling at the sealed bar before apparently figuring out what it was.

"Hoh. _Two_ meals in a single day. How decadent the life of a protector must be."

"It's the only way to keep you quiet," Baze muttered rather than admitting how his ears heated, guilty at his plenty.

Chirrut's grin stretched wider.

"Not the _only_ way."

Baze sighed through his nose.

"Although you might be right. The mouthes are generally occupied-"

Baze threw the wrapper at his head, slightly disappointed when Chirrut barely had to move to deflect it.

Chirrut didn't eat his bar, pocketing it and grinning.

But he didn't leave, either.

\--------

Baze left this time, for long enough that when his job was completed he could almost breathe again without pain, and the bruises on his face were a sickly greenish yellow. People avoided his eye contact even more vigorously than usual. He could almost get used to that. A sort of willful flinching invisibility.

When he returned, Chirrut was waiting for him. Snuck up on him without noise.

"Spare a coin for an unfortunate soul?"

Baze almost jumped out of his skin.

"Fucking swindler," He swore under his breath.

" _Me?_ " Chirrut affected an offended expression, "When my bed has been empty a fortnight?"

Baze said nothing, grimacing at the man's choice of public joke like a scolded wife's, then grudgingly smiling when he realized Chirrut's little joke hadn't taken any offense at all at being called a swindler. He lifted a palmsful of credits, a little guiltily, wondering if it was at all the right thing to do, letting them drop. 

Chirrut's ear cocked hard to the sound of the coins in his bowl, face slackening in surprise.

"Aren't you dead yet?" Baze muttered. 

Chirrut's hand fisted in his bowl a moment, then loosened, letting them slip through his fingers.

"I may be," the monk said faintly, disbelieving, "Your fault, of course."

"Shame," Baze muttered, resting a hand cautiously on his shoulder, thinking of the beggars clustered around the temple, and of the duties he'd once chafed at, wanting to be in the warm, reading, "Corpses make poor dining partners."

It was out of his mouth before he could think better of it- what was he _doing_?

"Mm. I suppose you would know," Chirrut replied, his brows knitted in a frown, fingertips still questing at the coins in his bowl, one ear tipped to Baze as though he expected some addition to this. 

Baze made a soft noise of agreement. Sobering hard at that.

Once, contact with the dead except for final rites would have been forbidden to him. Now, he thinks of filling his belly at a meeting of hired help, stew spattered with the blood of the unfortunate traitor in their midst. His showing a healthy appetite to convince his employer of his carelessness, his blithe innocence to the art of double-crossing.

He thinks of that meal, surrounded by cutthroats and thieves--eating to build his strength, Gotal blood in his stew, spattered across his cheek, playing at being a man who could stomach anything.

Chirrut's face brightened, and he reached out, plucking at Baze's sleeve.

"Fortunately for you, I am not quite dead, and have recently come by some credit."

" _Very_ recently," Baze muttered, scowling.

Chirrut just laughed, twisting and tightening his fingers in Baze's sleeve.

"Come with me, Protector. I know a place even you might like."

"And if I refuse?"

Chirrut made a rude noise of disapproval.

"It is the arduous cost of my friendship on this day, and if you refuse I will have no choice but to spend my evening in unsupervised mischief."

There was a sparkle of laughter even in his threats. A joy.

Baze wrinkled his nose, and plucked his sleeve out of Chirrut's hands, some strange sense of intuition cutting in.

"I'm not spending my credits at some brothel."

Chirrut's face was a picture of innocent offense.

"Oh, so you know of it."

"No whores," Baze growled, thinking of his days freshly stripped of his guardianship, which were supposed to be bright and freeing and instead had brought him despair.

The thought of watching the other man disappear laughing with an armful of curved womanly flesh did something to him he didn't quite want to think about. He wondered if the laughing beggar was a regular, if he was well-liked. Somehow he suspected he would be.

"Someplace with food. Drinks," Baze added, sensing the argument before it came, "Nothing else."

Chirrut's mouth had been open to protest, but instead slid shut in a catlike smile.

"Drinks, then."

Baze only made a noise in reply.

\--------

 _Friendship_ wasn't the chill about them, or the leaning of Chirrut's warmth. 

It wasn't his breath smoking in the air, ghosting between his lips while Baze's hands spanned against the dark of his robes feeling the warm of him beneath his clothes and his heart beat painfully hard in his chest as he thought of Chirrut holding women this way, kissing them this way.

\--------

Friendship maybe hadn't even been Chirrut sleeping his drunkenness off in Baze's shuttle rooms like he didn't have a single care for his own safety that first night he _did_ indulge him in a drink only to find the streetside guardian drank like a fish and the only thing that changed which he was drunk was he laughed harder, grinned wider, and cared even less for his own safety.

Maybe friendship wasn't even the hand that had found his and pulled him to a favored rooftop, a whispered voice asking how the stars looked, breath bitter with mandalorian wine.

Never mind how that request had admittedly panged hard in Baze, already wondering how Chirrut knew this rooftop had a view at all.

"You're blind, you fool. What do the stars matter to you?" Baze rasped finally, head spinning.

Chirrut had just smiled, apparently pleased, squeezing his hand, talking to his shoulder, pressed side to side.

"I like to know they're there. ...Describe them to me. The sound of your voice tells me you are also here. It is a great comfort."

"What makes you think I care about your comfort?" Baze muttered.

Chirrut just grinned, drunk and easy, satisfied as a lothcat full of sweet blue cream, patting his arm with a firm hand, head lolling against his shoulder.

"You have the heart of a star, Protector. I can feel it."

Despite his better judgment, Baze had done as he'd asked, talking of the stars until Chirrut dozed off against his shoulder.

He'd fumblingly taken him back to his shuttle, laying him in his own bunk, staying up until morning running diagnostics and sobering up.

...Perhaps, on reflection, not even that was friendship.

They were not Jedi, he reflected, for all he'd laughed watching Chirrut insist he could feel the force flowing through the universe best when he had a hangover. Squeezing his eyes shut and trying to reach and levitate things so he'd stalked off in an insulted huff when it hadn't happened and Baze laughed all the harder, calling after him.

_So this is how your faith rewards you?_

He hadn't seen Chirrut in the square the following day, had been called off for another job.

Feeling the force didn't mean it did your bidding, Baze reflected. And now the Jedi were all dead, so there was no one to ask if the tales were even real, or were just an exaggeration. If it could even go beyond something so simple it could be luck. Intuition. Careful training.

The Guardians of the Whills had never been Jedi. Had never mesmerized their way through a crowd, or lifted objects from shelves without effort.

(Baze had tried as a child. He _knew._ Honestly, who _didn't_ try? Billions upon billions of beings in the galaxy and maybe only ten thousand ever were talented enough with the force to become Jedi. What could it hurt to try?)

The Guardians of the Whills were not Jedi. Their path didn't even require force sensitivity. Only belief. The ability to feel, to see was only an added bonus, and at one time he'd made as keen a use of his advantages as he could.

They were not forbidden from entanglements, though they were advised not to become overly attached, that the present world, the present life was but a shadow of the force and they would once again be a part of it after death, just as the bones entrusted to the temple over time would permeate the Kyber, would become one with the Force.

But Baze was not a guardian, not anymore.

And Chirrut kissed well, he thought, as the smaller man tugged him down again, his hands stroking Baze's face like he could map it with his palms, missing slightly at first so his teeth raked the underside of Baze's lip where his beard began.

He was utterly real, utterly present, and full of life in a different way the force had never been to Baze though he felt it.

Chirrut's tongue was as glib and as coy as it was when it shaped his words, slipping into his mouth, wet and velvety, the faint taste and scent of tea on his breath, the faint relief it wasn't anything worse.

Someone had to have taught him, Baze thought without really registering. Someone must have _taught_ Chirrut the little clever flicks and licks of his tongue and teeth, and the way he tangled a hand in his hair. The thought came with a note of disapproval less about jealousy and more about proper guardianship.

The echo of grief.

Who had done that long ago? Had they too died on that day?

Was Chirrut one of the wild ones in the temple? Always in trouble for carnality? Should he have known him? Was he older? Younger? Baze had no memory of a blind alcolyte amongst the guardians. No recollection of a Chirrut Îmwe. Was that just his memory or did that mean something had blinded Chirrut later? One of the savage gangs? The Empire, seeking to make a point in its violence to the Guardians of the Whills, sworn as they were to peace and protection...?

He felt responsible, in some strange way, for how well Chirrut kissed, sure it had to be part of some bigger lack of aid along the line he'd been meant to stand in the way of. A part of some greater tragedy and injustice. A powerlessness.

Any coherence of that twisting thought dissolved at the way Chirrut's teeth dragged along his lip, the way his hands tangled in his hair, jarring him slightly with the forcefulness, against the lightness of his teasing.

He'd made him feel so _present_. Not some conglomeration of past failures or a failure of faith, but simply a body against a warm, pleasant body. A tactile, unassuming comfort Baze had been without for longer than he'd noticed. Little tugs and sparks of life. A little bubble of laughter into his mouth, the sensation of being pressed into, chased even, with his beard chafing the blind man's skin red from nose to chin. Chirrut didn't seem to mind or care.

Chirrut's form was another awareness, pressed firm and so very warm against him, through the layers of their clothes. His mouth always a step beyond what Baze could keep up with, forcing a level of focus on the now, a forgetting of the past, of anything beyond his lips and tongue and teeth on Baze's. His taste. His warmth.

Baze's ears and cheeks were stinging with cold, his lips bitten and swollen by the time Chirrut pulled away, thoughtful-looking, with the milky blue cataracts of his eyes catching the light like the underbelly of a shell. Something foreign. Fluid. Secret. Chirrut. Slowly opening over the course of months, of nights on this rooftop, talking, like a bivalve in a pool.

Chirrut, licking his own glistening lip like he was divining something from the taste of him alone, mouth swollen and red, intimate.

"Let me guess, that will cost me," Baze found his voice, heard its dullness, its dryness.

He had already thought of the roughness of his chapped lips, the roughness of all of him, really, with a flicker of sharp self-consciousness, and said nothing.

He couldn't bear the thought it might have been a gift, and if so, that he could be so ungrateful in wanting more, in wanting to crush himself against the smaller man's shoulder and cling to him like some sometimes-kind and sometimes-cruel beggar could actually save him.

He had never wanted to be touched, to be held, or kissed as a guardian, Jedi-like in his focus, and proud, so very proud...

He had never felt empty, physically deprived of the presence of someone else before.

Chirrut just frowned, tilting his head like he could get a better lock on him with one ear, then the other.

"...You're shivering. I can hear your teeth," Chirrut pointed out, a hand hot against Baze's sleeve, peering away with that frown he had, eyes and face fixed a little too far to the right of where Baze's face really was.

Baze had barely remembered to grunt. Barely remembered to respond at all.

His face burned. Everything burned, and still he shivered. He'd wanted to wrap his arms around the dark shape of his friend's body more than he could remember wanting anything, some standing together against the chill. He didn't act on it. Hands hanging awkwardly, loosely at Chirrut's waist, half-scared to even touch him further lest he do something quick and unpredictable and flit away forever.

He felt he knew him, in that moment. Suspected he knew how his eyes had gotten the way they had, and that if Chirrut knew his family name he would have recognized him in an instant and despised him for the way their temple burned, for his failure. That in a way, now he was trapped. Chirrut could never know.

He would care nothing of the way Baze had screamed to the sky, to the Force for a reason it had abandoned those who loved it more than anything. It wouldn't compare. It wasn't something which could be communicated, that grief.

Baze didn't want him to ever find out, he realized, wanted to go on holding him, kissing him until his ears stung, and Chirrut's mouth was so swollen it throbbed like a wound.

He wanted to exist dangerously within this strange possibility Chirrut had opened.

He wished for a lie to wrap himself in to keep things so simple, amazed that Chirrut could have become so very precious to him in such a short while...

(Something in him thrilled a warning. The good guardian he'd once been. The burning example he'd been, not to think his infatuation was anything like destiny, for the Guardians of the Whills taught many things other than trust in the force, and one of them was that material things were always fleeting.)

Chirrut laid a hand against his clothed chest, feeling for him for a moment before settling. He frowned again, perhaps feeling the brutal hammering of Baze's heart through his armor.

"You've been in the cold with me for too long. I will warm you," Chirrut murmured, drawing Baze from his memories of fire and pain, his homesickness with a tug to his sleeves.

Chirrut's voice had been soft, as it sometimes could be, his fingers hot against his, promising safety, and security in a way, and Baze had been without for a long time, perhaps even a place to bury his tangled head and be lost.

He could do nothing but follow, guided by the hand tugging at his. Stumbling after him.

\--------

It was blind Chirrut who guided him back to the desolate, cramped place he rented daily, the ever-changing neighbors howling away beneath the flickering light of the shoddy illuminator bulb in the stairwell. 

Something snuffled and sobbed in a heap of tatters in one corner.

Chirrut paused, frowning as he flicked a credit piece with his thumb--probably his last one. He was surprisingly accurate, landing it beside the creature's head, murmuring a blessing.

"The force of others be merciful to you."

The creature didn't even pause, didn't seem to hear, or to see, continuing to sob with the chit gleaming on one dark and ragged hem.

The Force, Baze knew, bitterly, was not merciful to anyone.

Chirrut's room was a horrible, Spartan, windowless place. A curtain separating a wash basin and a crude septic pod from the rest of the tiny room, which held nothing but a single low, scuffed table, one of the legs propped on a wad of paper, and a bedroll on the floor jammed right next to it with a ceramic pillow and the linens unkept and rucked down around the impression of Chirrut's body for who-knew how many days.

Small though the room was, it was still larger than the city's coffin hotels. Space was at a premium in a densely populated place like Jedha City. This place had no doubt been designed for off-worlders. A curious choice. Was Chirrut...foreign?

The comparative spaciousness of the cramped little place was the only luxury

Baze noted there was a drain in the floor which no doubt allowed the owners to rinse the place in a cursory fashion before sending the next creature in. Temple incense lingered over top of the reek of the place itself. A crate in one corner holding nothing but what looked like a jar of back-alley rotgut and a packet of the temple's purification scent in a tiny metal tray.

There were no decorations. Not a hint of anything living in the whole place. Bitterly poor. He could hear things moving in the grate.

Baze had seen bounty hunters keep their captives in more luxurious cages than the place Chirrut slept. And he thought on a second glance that he saw three empty rotgut jars behind the crate, forcing him to reflect just how much he'd seen the blind guardian with a cup in his hand, the bones of his wrist delicate in his fallen sleeve, holding it up. Just how many times he'd seen him laughing and getting swindled out of his credits, or swindling slightly with his charm and his smile in return. 

How little he slept, and how much he drank... both things Baze perhaps should have picked up on sooner.

There was no heater, Baze realized. The room was almost as cold as the outside. Cold in so many ways. Perhaps when he looked at the foul liquid in that crate, he also looked at the only way Chirrut had to keep warm.

Baze hadn't had the chance for more than a look, a twinge of dismay at his friend's arrangements before Chirrut kissed him again, far harder, in his doorway, helping the faulty servos of the door roll open with a hard shove of his hip, a scrabbling back of his fingers to close it behind them both.

_Oh._

So that's what he'd meant.

He realized he'd expected maybe a cup of tea. Chirrut's hand in his as it had been on many nights with Chirrut grinning sightless out at the stars, almost sly, playful.

_Tell me what your favorites are and what they look like._

His protests back:

_And how would you know what I see, Blind Fool? I could make up anything I liked._

Chirrut laughing at him, dropping a koan.

 _The lie that brings joy hits upon greater truth._ He'd murmured.

He'd decided then, on the simplest option: the truth.

This too was something simple.

He hadn't thought for a moment that Chirrut might not even have a set for tea, for guests, might have only himself to offer.

Might be _willing_ to.

In a way that was more tragic than anything that had ever befallen _him._.

What had happened to Chirrut to make him like this? To make the force leave someone who loved it like it was breath and life's milk? Baze knew he loved nothing so well as his friend loved the force, perhaps hadn't loved the force like that even when he'd been the most devout, the most praised and dedicated of all the new Guardians.

He was afraid again, at the thought, that he was getting in far too deep with Chirrut Îmwe, wanted far too much to be near him, even as his arms wrapped around him hard enough to press the breath from the other man.

He realized just as belatedly that Chirrut had no lamps in his home before the door slid shut with a crunch, leaving him in the dark and he was left rebuking himself in his own head. No. Of course he didn't.

"Hold on. I can't see."

Chirrut made a noise of impatience, struggling a little in the vise of his arms.

"Ah. How difficult for you. I can only imagine."

Baze snorted and loosened his grip, fumbling an illuminator from one of the pockets of his jumpsuit, the white light making Chirrut look harsh, slightly irritable.

"What exactly would you like me to hold on to?" Chirrut continued, pointedly pawing at his armor, and reaching around behind him, squeezing his ass hard enough to hurt. Baze jumped, laughed despite himself. A short, sharp noise more surprise than humor.

He wondered with a pang what Chirrut might have been like in his temple days, if he was so reckless and fallen back then or if he too was touched by a vast grief for what was lost.

He wonders what he would have been like with his eyes intact. If Chirrut would have still kissed him with his hair cropped off, his beard clean-shaven, and his ears sticking out as they did. If he hadn't been blind and could see it all, if he'd known him as he was.

 _We are brothers. Veterans together._ Baze thought in another fresh swell of grief, before realizing the old him probably would have had no time for Chirrut Îmwe, would never have known how badly he could want to kiss him.

Chirrut didn't wait for Baze to tell him it was alright and he had light before he was on him again, kissing him hard enough Baze's battery tank clanked against the door, Chirrut pawing at his armor, his baggy jumpsuit so there was no doubt, mouth wet and impossibly hungry against his own.

"How is this even attached to you?" Chirrut muttered, comically impatient after trying to feel with his fingers for the closures of Baze's armor, "Is it your skin?" He asked, almost sarcastic but not quite.

Baze just hummed through his nose, too bemused to be remotely helpful. He was still caught in his former dismay that as true a Guardian of the Whills as Chirrut was to his core, with his real, thrumming, vibrant faith he could feel, could stand to live in such squalor and infamy after the clean and quiet of the temple. The cool, dark places. The warmth of the meditation rooms. _Their_ lost temple. The Guardians of the Whills had never gone in overmuch for possessions, but had generally kept things clean, tidy, without a sense of squalor.

That and the noise of anything had to be louder for Chirrut and this place was unsettling even to him. It had to be like screaming in his ear. A weight of misery.

Did Chirrut know the way he lived?

His initial amusement died quickly.

Reminding himself there _was_ no temple, no safe, quiet place for Chirrut Îmwe to live at all.

Somehow his mind drifted, picturing Chirrut in his bedroll aboard his cramped little shuttle on the city's outskirts, sterner and unsmiling in sleep, the flat, straight profile with its proud lips, and high forehead, the line of his shoulders wrapped in the thick, soft bantha pelt Baze had been paid in for that job for the moisture colony back on Tatooine that had had so little to give, taxed to the bone by the Hutt cartels.

Safe.

He pictures him warm and safe, curled like a felinx, even as he wonders where the thought comes from. If it's just wishful or if it's another of those sorts of inconsistent premonitions he's denied for so long. Waking visions, and vivid dreams that blur the lines of waking.

Chirrut Îmwe isn't the sort of person to sit and lounge in comfort, or wait for him at the end of a day. He knows this somehow. The man is active. Restless. Wild spurts of motion and sagging slumps after, not breathless but somehow heavy, like he's taken some great and gravid darkness into him somehow.

Baze shouldn't be thinking of any place as keeping him.

He's getting much too tangled up with this man. This con. And Chirrut can be spiteful.

...If the Force cared, it should be warning him, he thinks, not feeding him the lie he yearns for.

Chirrut just scowled at him, reached down, and pointedly hiked his own dark robes up, tying them off to the sides, feeling for the shape of Baze's stomach, his legs, positioning himself by touch to wedge his sharp knee against the bulge of Baze's groin, yanking him back down by the hair, almost missing his mouth, kissing him like he was intent on bruising.

Intent on _something_ Baze thought, squirming a little at such aggressive and heated intention.

Baze finally thawed enough to move, to decide not to question these things any longer.

He had unlaced him, undone him, had drunk in the peek of Chirrut's hips against his, the new glimpses of unseen skin, pressing clumsy, worshipful kisses to the space, his skin hot to the touch. Chirrut's fingers bemusedly tangled in his hair.

He didn't dare try to pull more of the layers off the blind man, to make him more vulnerable to him any more than he wanted Chirrut to find out how to actually strip him down, much less begin locating and removing the weapons his jumpsuit hid, or touching the scars he'd accumulated since leaving the temple.

He wasn't ready to have his body mapped and read, to have pointed conversation about the poorly healed scars wrapped across him like permanently churned waters.

He wasn't sure he was ready to map Chirrut's body either, frightened he'd find the sort of rigidly kept perfection of the high guardians still alive in a way he'd lapsed on. A physical perfection Chirrut couldn't even _attain_ , with his eyes as they were.

\--------

 _Perhaps_ -

whispers a thought in his mind's ear-

_Perhaps that is why you never heard of him. The imperfect never make full guardians, and every flaw is the testimony of the force's will._

...To think these thoughts once soothed him.

To think he once thought himself capable of flawlessness. Superior in that way...

Chirrut wore his flaw in his eyes.

Baze wore his flaw deeper down, in his quaking, hopeless heart, which wanted impossible things, and failed him when he needed it most.

Perhaps the elders, too, had been imperfect, to have looked on something like him and deemed it perfect enough, applauding his discipline and control and seeing nothing of the weakness at his core.

One was to be as unyielding and enduring as the Kyber. As history itself. Built upon, not changed.

Set in stone.

Baze had not been. Had never been, even when his body had been perfect and his heart as cold as a stone.

He sees this now and reflects on broken crystals, and how many years were wasted in that lie.

\--------

Baze let Chirrut keep his clothing, let him maintain his warmth and decorum, while Chirrut drew him back up and worried at his neck, leaving hard bruises, breathing harshly when tracing at him had found him furiously erect.

He jumped noticeably at the touch of Baze's fingers, squirming.

"Where were you raised? Warm your hands first!" Chirrut snapped.

Baze sighed, picked up the illuminator off the floor, passing its hot surfaces over his fingers until they felt suitably scalded, while the guardian squirmed, dragging himself impatiently against the rough of Baze's suit.

Chirrut had sighed though when he'd touched him again, relaxing, curled against his shoulder, mouthed at the bristly join of his neck to his jaw, and promptly caught his chin on the plate of Baze's armor with a hiss of pain.

Baze snorted despite himself.

"Get this damned thing off," Chirrut snarled, holding his chin, seemingly surprised by Baze's choke of laughter, lifting his head to frown at him.

Baze wondered if the force let him feel the great wash of impossible tenderness he had towards Chirrut. Before he resented the thought immediately.

He wasn't the force's bloodied instrument.

Chirrut's cock was solid and warm in his hands, strangely comforting. Chirrut himself giving an oddly contented hum at the slow, loose grip of his hand, curling his body a little closer to him.

He'd dreamed of being gentle to the sightless man who'd become his companion, who had wormed his way in through winsomeness and insolence, his insistence on being entitled to every last scrap of Baze's attention any time he liked.

Paused in confusion every time, because while it was in his nature to feel softly, it had never extended to someone quite like Chirrut before. He'd liked demure, meek people. People who needed protecting. Who would be grateful.

Chirrut was none of those things.

He was also, somehow, impossibly beautiful.

Baze was realizing that, belatedly: the mistrust he'd had had been of Chirrut's beauty, assuming it was somehow weaponized long before he'd realized it was actually affecting him.

Chirrut face flickered in something like surprise at Baze's fingers touching his cheek, tracing the crease of it, the proud, narrow profile, relearning it in terms of this revelation. _Beautiful_.

He wondered if Chirrut knew how he looked even in the harsh white glow of the illuminator, with his pants open and tugged just barely off his hips. He certainly seemed to count on its effect in his day-to-day dealings, with his broad smile, but did he _know_?

He wasn't smiling at being touched now, just blinking, uncomfortably.

"You really can't see," Chirrut said in a tone of dawning awareness.

"I can."

Baze wondered suddenly if he was meant to get down and suck him off. Realized with a surge of emotion that he would maybe even like to, would like to take him in his throat and please him as he hadn't done to a man in years, using breathing exercises he'd learned as a guardian to still his throat.

He'd almost convinced himself to do it, to drop to his creaking knees, before Chirrut urged him forward to him with impatience, pulled at his hair, bit his cheek in what might have been a particularly savage kiss, muttering something Baze couldn't quite hear.

That was the thing, Chirrut was rougher than he'd expected, pushing him back with his hand about his throat, laughing breathless and delighted when Baze countered by slamming him down (harder than he'd meant) against his narrow table, the short, loose legs of it rocking precariously under his weight. Chirrut didn't seem to mind. On the contrary, he seemed to _like_ being manhandled.

Baze spat into his palm and kissed the twisting, laughing monk again, slowly rousing, growing excited.

Chirrut's muffled laughter gave way to his breathing, the pained, almost confused furrow of his brow and parting on his lips as Baze breached him with the wet point of his thumb, thinking for a second that perhaps that wasn't what Chirrut wanted. Perhaps Chirrut had wanted _him_ on his belly over the table instead of being on his back and breached, himself.

Chirrut only curled his fingers harder in Baze's hair, pressed their foreheads together hard, grasping and tugging, rubbing at Baze through his clothes.

And he'd laughed again, suddenly, so Baze had felt it in his fingers, the breath of it against his lips.

"...What?"

"Aah. Nothing," Chirrut's grin was far too bright for him not to know what it did to people, even flushed and spread open over his own table he was winsome and insolent, patting Baze's hip.

"I can tell you arm yourself heavily, Protector. I'm pleased it isn't all for show."

His voice was throaty and husky from kissing, fingers splayed against the crotch of Baze's jumpsuit. He squeezed for good measure so Baze gulped, sliding his thumb a little deeper, astonished at his tightness.

"It hasn't been shot off yet," Baze managed to grunt against the grind of the heel of Chirrut's palm. Ludicrously good. He'd never been so relieved Chirrut couldn't see his face as he was when he tried to curb his breathing.

"It's as reasonable a target as any," Chirrut breathed a little roughly, still grinning, parting his legs a little wider for him, tugging him down to him by the back of the neck, still feeling and tugging at Baze's clothed erection.

Baze almost laughed, realizing quite belatedly he was being flirted with.

"My- wallet is safely elsewhere if that is what you really want," Baze replied, meaning it as a joke, surprised when the smile on Chirrut's face flickered, faltered.

(This too could be an act, Baze thought. Somehow...he didn't care.)

"I'd give it to you gladly if you were but to ask," Baze added more gently, not understanding why that prompted such a bark of laughter in return until Chirrut replied with a decidedly smug tug, a sly teasing.

" _Would_ you? You would give it to me?" He laughs again, "Leave me gasping at the contents of your _wallet_?"

He laughs harder, tightening up around Baze's thumb.

Baze swallowed, looked at Chirrut's tipped back chin, his impossibly attractive insolence.

"...Eventually," Baze replied.

Chirrut gave a pleased hum, sightless eyes roaming the ceiling, grinning at his own tiresome jokes.

"I shall have to use it well, then."

"And when and where does a Guardian of the Whills discover how to use such a thing?"

He knows much of his own carnal knowledge came from later on. Says nothing of that.

Chirrut's smile vanished, a thin thread of surprising anger flickering in his face though his voice was careless, airy.

"Then perhaps you should find a _true guardian_ and ask them."

Baze turned his head to him by the chin, a softness in him.

"I _am_ asking one."

He hesitated, pressed his mouth awkwardly to the curve of Chirrut's cheek, finding it cold, cupping it with a palm to warm it.

"'Plenty in the hand leaves a malnourished spirit," he quoted, hesitantly.

Chirrut gives a bark of filthy laughter.

"Plenty in the _hand_ ," he repeats, giving Baze another squeeze through his suit, "Is that what this is? A quest for enlightenment?"

The flutter of Chirrut's returning smile was a little vain in its utter pleasure, his face relaxing, inclining his head into the touch that was the only answer Baze could think to give. 

"Mm. You've had a poor sampling of Guardians if you think I have any enlightenment to give. Only what you see," he chided Baze, though his voice had softened.

"You know nothing of me," Baze snapped.

It came out faster than he meant it to, a growl with a spark of anger in it.

Baze grimaced at Chirrut's surprise.

"...I...am sorry," he amended, "I have...tired you long enough with my talk," Baze muttered, not looking at him.

The noise Chirrut made in response was noncommittal, cut off by a noise of triumph as he finally found the seal of Baze's suit, milky eyes skimming over the air beside him, catching the harsh, white light. His lips parted in a grin.

His hands were still, impossibly enough, quite warm.

"One last question, then. How soon before I can know this?"

Baze breathed out hard despite himself. His hand found the soft, short cap of Chirrut's hair, pulling the man to him, kissing the swell of his bruised mouth.

Chirrut breathed into him with a huff of laughter, fingers lukewarm against him, mapping his crotch through the breach of his suit.

He laughed again into Baze's mouth, pulling away just barely, so every word exhaled into his mouth, making it difficult to catch his breath, to taste anything but Chirrut's tea.

"Mm. Found your purse."

Baze snorted as Chirrut snickered into his neck.

"What? _Your_ talk may be tedious but mine is delightful and full of wisdom," he pushed at Baze's hair, whispering into his ear, "You provide a _very_ reasonable target, Protector." 

Baze sighed.

He wanted to say a lot of things, stumbled over them in his mind for a few moments too long.

"...So do you," he settled on.

"Oh. Kill me if you must, then, but don't draw it out," Chirrut added with a slight motion of his head that could have been a roll of his eyes, a grin. He hooked his legs around Baze's waist, kicking once with his heels like he was urging a mount forward, "You're still talking?"

Baze didn't have a response for that, for the little twist that dug into his chest.

The blind man frowned harder when Baze ducked to spit again on his fingers.

Chirrut made a noise at the press of his thumb, tightened his grip on Baze's hair when he spat hard on his cock and wrapped his fingers around it.

He laughed suddenly again, fingers buried against Baze's scalp.

" _Rough man_ ," he breathed, his neck arching back, "ah, you must have made many of the girls in the Holy City cry."

Baze considered this a moment.

"...A man who makes women weep has no cause to brag. He only boasts in his own unskillfulness."

His ears heated when he realized it came out sounding like a pronouncement, an ancient koan, half-expecting to be teased and told to be quiet.

Chirrut laughed again in surprised delight at that, clenching up around him with a groan. Tense Tight. Baze remembers thinking it could take a while.

Baze relaxes a little when he isn't told to be quiet, his hand tentatively passing along Chirrut's covered belly, rubbing awkward little soothing circles.

"You, Îmwe? Are you such a man?"

Chirrut snorts, his nails dragging against Baze's scalp.

"Hah! Making men weep has always delighted me far more," Chirrut replies with a grin that leeches the viciousness from the words, "They are always so proud before they meet me...but not you, I think."

He frowns slightly, breath coming in little pants against Baze's face, slightly dazed, cock wetting in Baze's hands.

"Your path is...clouded...you, I think...are broken already. I... What's wrong with you?"

It didn't come out as an accusation even if Baze instinctively flinches, half-thinking he's hurt him. Chirrut's eyes are roaming the ceiling, though, frowning in the half-darkness, hidden in Baze's shadow. A question then. 

Baze has nothing to say to that, to any of the things Chirrut said which cut too deeply and too frankly, and so quickened the questing of his finger instead of answering.

It didn't take much to make Chirrut groan for all his brash talk of his prowess, the monk's hands covering his freezing ears like he could hold him there, forehead to forehead, his sightless eyes stubbornly open.

They remained open even when Baze slid in a second finger with difficulty, up to the second knuckle, twisting and curling as well as he was able against the tightness of him. Chirrut's lips startling open with a surprised, strangled noise.

"You don't have anything?" Baze asks finally holding off against the almost chafing grip of Chirrut's fingers, rubbing Chirrut's clothed belly.

"Any- _what?_ " Chirrut stuttered, completely unlike himself. He panted when Baze moved his fingers.

No. Of course not. Chirrut had nothing.

"Lubricant," Baze murmurs in his ear softly, still flicking his eyes about the room.

Chirrut scowls, twisting in discomfort, "Do I look like a _droid_?"

Baze pressed his lips to his temple, rubbing at Chirrut's cock to take some of the edge off. He was wet. Impossibly wet, little dribbling pearls of precum drooling along Baze's fingers. He swallowed hard just looking down at it.

"...Not really."

He could barely hear himself it came out so faintly against the panting of the other man's breath, the working of his fingers.

"What?" Chirrut snapped.

He bit off a noise when Baze leaned down to spit again at his fingers, hands fisting in the front of Baze's jumpsuit, making him frown.

He couldn't be... Not already?

"Have you...never done this?" Baze whispered, surprised, fingers loosely sliding over Chirrut's wet cock.

Chirrut just gave a bark of what was probably meant to be laughter. Scornful. It came out strangled, his nails biting hard enough in the back of Baze's neck that he drew blood.

Baze tried squeezing the base of Chirrut's cock to keep him steady, and was astonished when that apparently wasn't enough.

Was enough.

Chirrut curled up around him with a noise. A very, very little noise while a startled Baze did his best to catch the mess in his palm, to protect Chirrut's clothing, working quickly to wring him off in time with his spurts.

The gusts of Chirrut's breathing came hard and anguished.

They both went still.

\---------

And in a matter of minutes Chirrut was gone, his warmth was gone, the fevered mantra of a prayer the only sound against the din and racket of the neighbors.

And Perhaps, Baze thinks, he was never really his to have in the first place.

\---------

Something of the prayer called him forward, against his better judgment. Something familiar. Something that still screamed 'home' to him no matter how much parts of him wanted to scream back, or to quietly excuse himself, half-hard and faintly guilty.

He thought of Chirrut's hand in his beneath the stars. The stone, wet in his fingers from Chirrut's mouth.

They were still friends. In his heart, they were friends.

He squared his shoulders, tucking himself back in to his jumpsuit, and rose, taking the illumination crystal with him, cradled carefully in one palm so it wouldn't burn his fingers. A little spot of scalding warmth.

Baze paused with his fingers wrapped around the curtain, tugged it open slowly so as not to alarm the other man and to give him plenty of chances to stop him if he chose to.

Chirrut didn't.

Baze breathed out.

Chirrut's clothes were all crumpled into a heap on the floor, discarded.

He lay half-prone beside his bowl, hands outstretched before him, whispering in an unbroken stream of sound.

" _I'm one with the force and the force is with me I'm one with the force and the force is with me._ "

His back seemed small and thin, though Baze knew from an objective look it was not, and he remembered the serpent-quickness of Chirrut's hands well. In prostration, he _seemed_ small.

In the harsh, white light of the illuminator, Chirrut was everything Baze had feared he would be. His skin was smooth, golden-tan even under the harsh light, and he was utterly unblemished. _Perfect_

as only the most elite guardians had once been, his waist as trim as a young man's, though he had that ageless look to him, and based on his faith couldn't have been so young. Baze noted with a spot of surprise there was no tattoo of eighth Duan completion on his back. That somehow the blank expanse stared at him, all the more confusing and inviting, the tones of him warm and welcoming but for the cold, sightless blue of his eyes.

Chirrut could have been a statue in a garden with his fingertips kissed by the walking acolytes, and his outstretched hands filled with offerings of flowers.

His shoulders, Baze noted distractedly, were broad, little beads of water or of sweat absolutely obscene on the taut planes of his body. Baze thought of the steppe lizard-birds coming to drink the water from Chirrut's skin, the nectar-flies with their colorful wings coming to lick the salt of it, like he was just another of the rare blooms. He thought of what he looked like in stillness.

Baze looked at him and swallowed, pointedly ignoring the pained throb of his cock, the blurring of perceptions. Those gardens were long gone. Destroyed by the empire.

Chirrut, he realized with a burst of astonishment, was _painfully_ and classically good-looking. More than just a pretty face and a nice figure in his robes. A whole generation of bronzes and clay statues would have been inspired by his form, his poses, his perfect unselfconsciousness.

Baze forced himself to focus.

This...wasn't the time to be distracted, when he'd possibly offended his friend, had been granted this access without fight or acknowledgment.

That was a gift.

Baze settled next to him on his haunches. Hands on his knees so he wouldn't touch himself. Wouldn't pollute whatever order or penance Chirrut was doing.

Chirrut's head snapped to him sharply, barely even pausing his mantra to rush out the same way, "-I need to do this."

He was shivering, Baze noticed silently, hands balled up at his knees, not sure if he should touch the other man or not, breath still half-caught in his chest.

Chirrut made the choice for him, jerking into motion for the bowl. He gasped with cold, splashing himself, still chanting punishingly.

" _I'm one with the force and the force is with me._ "

Baze seized his hands before he knew what he was doing.

"No!" Chirrut screamed, knocking him back easily, a striking off-handed blow to the chest that kicked like an eopie before he returned to chanting, praying harder, faster, more desperately, rocking.

The pain of the blow bloomed and throbbed like a little sun in his chest, aching in time with Baze's heartbeat.

The wailing above them escalated, thumping against the ceiling.

Baze surged to his feet and this time covered Chirrut's ears out of some instinct that wasn't the force because the force owed him far more than comforting one more wretched person it had left broken.

The man's entire body shuddered and stilled, expression working in disbelief, confusion, an odd note of yearning, hands seizing his wrists-

Not hard. Not crushing, as he well could have.

Silence but for the wails through the ceiling.

Baze settled behind him, warm all along his back, wet soaking into the fabric of his jumpsuit. Chirrut shivered, still frozen in place. He felt him as acutely as a tangible ache, as though the body in his arms were an extension of his own, the line of his throat drawn taut to one side. It would be so easy to drop his lips there-

(The right thing to do? The wrong thing to do? Somehow he knew the wrong thing would be the final straw.)

He didn't move to act on the urge, still holding his hands over the blind man's ears.

"Pray," Baze said.

Chirrut said nothing, blind eyes searching in the darkness, mouth slightly open. He looked so lost, trembling in cold, in barely contained motion.

Baze kept his hands over the man's ears for a moment, before he moved, slowly, carefully tracing a hand over one shivering shoulder, along the wet cap of his hair, smoothing gestures, light, and even, soothing him with the slowness of it all.

Chirrut's eyes slid shut, and he twitched in another hard shudder, a hand still gripping at Baze's wrist, still shivering violently in his arms.

He stilled again.

"It's alright. Keep praying," Baze whispered in his ear, taking the towel from beside the basin and wiping his face as gently as he could, noting that Chirrut gave off heat like a furnace, and that his eyelids fluttered like a man with a fever at the touch of something cold.

"I'm...one with the force," Chirrut stammered, fingers biting in to Baze's arm around his shoulders. He bit his lip, rocking slightly with an agitated hum. Baze cupped the back of his head, passed his hand down his back, their heads ducked close together so they shared heat.

"And the force- the force..."

Chirrut clenched his fist close to his face suddenly, breathing into the palm of it like a blessing before he snatched Baze's face, biting at the underside of his jaw through the scruff of his beard.

Baze wrapped his hand around the clutching fingers, giving him something to squeeze, to gnaw at, to hurt. He didn't react except to offer what he could.

Chirrut's teeth found his knuckle, found the web of skin between his index and middle finger. Bites that gave pain but didn't break skin. Weren't really hard. Dry teeth.

"I can _feel_ you," Chirrut moaned, unclenching his teeth and rocking with another agitated hum, butting his head sideways, very nearly catching Baze in the nose, biting at Baze's wrist, at the bone of it. He licked at his fingers like an animaI, an unhinged thing, weirdly disconnected. Surreal.

Baze _felt_ him sucking and biting at his fingers as though from a distance, sensual enough that it couldn't be possible--something out of a fever dream. Something he didn't react to even as he was aware of what it should look like and how he _should_ be reacting.

"I can _feel_ you," Chirrut repeated, clutching his hand to his face, "the way it moves around you," his filmy eyes shone with unspilled tears.

The force, Baze knew. He was talking about the force.

(-The force serves no one. It is impossible to know or be one with it.)

Baze squeezed his hand, smoothed the short cap of his hair. The blind man squirmed.

"I meant you no harm, Îmwe," he settled for, finally.

Chirrut made a scoffing noise, irritable, impatient, " _I know that._ "

Baze's brow furrowed.

"...It's been-...years," Chirrut blurts with a scowl, mitigating the harsh loudness of his voice with a sudden, compulsive kiss of Baze's knuckle, a gripping press of it his curled hand to his forehead, " _Years._ "

Miserable.

Baze's eyebrows shot up.

 _Oh_.

" _Really._ "

He thought he began to understand.

Chirrut turned his face towards him with a frown.

Baze patted delicately at his back in lieu of answering, fumbling for words, his own quite mundane relief and embarrassment.

"...that is...a waste."

 _You are very handsome._ he wants to say. Can't quite. _You must be highly sought._

It sticks. Doesn't make it past his teeth.

Chirrut snorted angrily, his head dropping, voice sharp.

"Not for _that_ you stupid-"

Baze flinched. And as though sensing it, Chirrut didn't finish.

He should have been offended, instead of some old flutter of shame, conditioned penitence lashing through Baze's belly. To be stupid was to be _imperfect_ , and true guardians sought perfection. Body. Spirit. Mind.

They remained tense and silent a moment before Baze unwound his arms from about him, Chirrut's face blank and almost expressionless, dull blue eyes staring downwards. Baze tried not to look at his arms, his bare chest with its dark, erect nipples, and definitely not at Chirrut's cock, or the tops of his thighs. He curled his hands into fists in his lap.

Perfect.

Chirrut's brows knit harder the longer they sat together in silence.

"...I hope we are still friends," Baze said quietly, finally.

Chirrut's lips parted, closed again, head tilting aimlessly towards him.

"...is that what you hope?" His voice was rough. Strangely bitter.

"Yes," Baze said, as quietly as he dared, "What do _you_ hope, Îmwe?"

He honestly expected nothing, to be asked to forget this, this regrettable episode, to think nothing of it, or, worse still, to be told to leave.

Chirrut's fingers curled against his knees. A muscle set in his jaw.

"What does it matter what a blind fool hopes?"

"It matters to me."

"Why?"

"Because I am the one who wishes to bring it to you."

Chirrut went silent at that for a long moment.

"I'm _cold_ ," he said suddenly, a little too loudly, escalating it into a child's whine.

"I'm so cold."

Baze let out the breath he'd been holding, settling a hand against Chirrut's thigh.

He thought he heard Chirrut snort in response, his warm, hard hand settling around Baze's wrist, squeezing a little too tightly.

Relief broke over him like a wave in a sea--a sight he would carry with him to his grave. Fighting on the platforms of of a lost planet while the rains torrented down and the seas thundered about them, angry curls of gray fit to bury anything.

"Is that all?"

Chirrut's laugh was sharp and bitter enough to cut.

"It's everything to those who have little."

"I can warm you," Baze says quietly, adding with some hesitation, "You made a mess of yourself."

"Well you wipe me down, then," the other man demanded, back to his old mock-irritation, "I'm _blind_. I can't see the mess _you_ left-"

Baze turned his head and kissed his fine, spoiled mouth mid-command, pulled back to a huff of air, a startled, then bemused look on Chirrut's face, staring into space.

"That was not my intention."

Something in the man's body relaxed very very slightly.

Baze let go of him, pulling away. He shifted deliberately, where Chirrut could hear, and unhooked his battery pack, setting it down with a heavy clank. Decisive. Significant.

Chirrut's head swiveled, following his motion with his hearing, frowning slightly. He caught himself hard when Baze pushed his thighs apart, licking a spot of cold come on the inside of one of them, pausing to allow a protest if given.

There wasn't one.

Baze's only reward was a catch of breath, of hands in his hair, a groan when Baze shifted the other's over-sensitive penis with his fingers. It quickly turned into a fluttering laugh, the fight leaving Chirrut's shoulders.

" _Oh_ ," Chirrut murmured, surprised and pleased, threading his hands into the tangle of Baze's hair, his laugh turning into a gasp as Baze peeled down his foreskin, a high, overstimulated whine while his tongue cleaned the delicate folds of skin.

A flush spread quickly down Chirrut's chest, his legs closing up around Baze's head.

"Alright?" Baze asked, pausing.

Chirrut murmured something fast under his breath, adding in a louder voice:

"Yes, _Alright_ ," he breathed, sightless eyes darting around wildly. His expression opened. Bloomed. The grip of his knees relaxing.

"This is what you wanted?" Baze clarified, shifting his hands about his ankles. He licked the side of Chirrut's cock until he moaned.

"I-" for once Chirrut seemed at a loss for words, the fingers of one of his hands mashed against his bruised mouth. "You're going to make- _such_ a mess..." Chirrut stammered, one hand still in Baze's hair, a higher, nervous chitter to his laughter.

It was the first time Baze could ever remember seeing him anywhere close to flustered.

Baze gave a noncommittal grunt near the base of Chirrut's cock that got a responding puff of breath.

"No. I will clean you this time."

The flutter of laughter seemed to reverberate in him. Chirrut twitched when he kissed the inside of his knee.

"Do you do this for all of your friends, Protector?" Chirrut whispered.

Baze gave another hum, lips turning up in a smile. He kissed Chirrut's hip, lapped at the pooling pouch of his balls with his tongue so Chirrut groaned again, and slumped back on one elbow, right hand still tangled in Baze's hair.

" _I'm one with the force and the force is with me-_ " he whispered, head tipped back towards the ceiling, cut off by Baze's scoff of incredulous laughter.

"You _pray_ at a time like this?"

He smiled, despite himself, kissing the inside of Chirrut's thigh and getting a light hit to the side of his head in response. He had a perfect view of the other's jumping abdominal muscles, the sculpting of his chest, a little flash of gold around his neck. A necklace. He couldn't quite catch the design. Important, he thought, to be made of such a fine material and still find Chirrut so poor. He would have sold it if it weren't important. He'd have to ask the story behind it later.

"Well," Chirrut muttered, head still tipped towards the ceiling, color burning high in his cheeks, "What better opportunity to pray?"

Baze snorted and licked a long stripe against the other thigh, feeling Chirrut's cock finally give a twitch by his cheek.

"The force isn't the one doing all the work," He murmured.

"With you acting like it will break me to be touched, the force- might have to lend a hand," Chirrut snapped, heavy and a little breathless, "You can _bite_ , you know. Be- _rougher_. It's what I thought you'd do. Not all this..." He doesn't finish except with an aggravated noise.

Baze frowned, cheek against Chirrut's stomach, hands still resting on his thighs.

"Why would I want to be rougher with you?" He whispers, sneaking another kiss from Chirrut's mouth before he can retort.

With Chirrut the way he was now he couldn't imagine being rougher.

"I can take it," Chirrut snarled, his shoulders hunching upwards, defiant, "I won't _break_."

"That's not-" Baze breathed out, exasperated, "You shouldn't be made to," Baze muttered before he could think better of it, knowing how it felt to be broken. Knowing he wouldn't wish that on anyone as he touched Chirrut's cheek again, passing a thumb against the line of his throat.

_Has no one seen you are meant for other things?_

He doesn't ask that aloud, doesn't give coherent thought or word to the swell of protective feeling in his chest.

Chirrut's sightless eyes widened, then he groaned, tipping his head back.

"Temple Bones," he swore, "You really aren't-"

Chirrut went quiet, widening his sightless blue eyes before he pressed the heels of his hands to them, abdominal muscles crunching in a way Baze felt his knees tremble for.

"...the force has given me a _romantic_." Chirrut muttered.

He sounded disbelieving, just shy of frustrated. Baze frowns anyway, words jumping to the end of his tongue before he can think it through.

"The force gave nothing. _I_ thought you were beautiful the moment I saw you in that alley with the blood of other men on your knuckles."

It comes out in a blurt. Too serious. And far more than Baze intended to say. It's something he hadn't even admitted to himself.

Chirrut's laughter is a bright, startled thing, grinning like the sun, beneath the fingers spread out to hide his face, cutting off with a sharp noise as Baze sucks hard at the base of him, regarding his handiwork.

"You're-" Chirrut makes a noise. "You're- serious. I can't believe..."

Propped on one elbow, naked, flushed, and dangerously erect so quickly again, Chirrut Îmwe is beautiful. A ruinously bad idea.

"Hn. A first for you, then, finding a thing beyond belief."

 _Believe._ Baze wills him, teasing his head with a drag of the rough of his tongue, rewarded by a helpless little noise deep in Chirrut's throat.

The hand in Baze's hair relocates quickly once he's got him in his mouth, and from there, as with all forms of meditation, time proceeds differently.

He thinks he might remember the sound forever.

There are many noises in Chirrut's oversensitized state. Many are high, pained, but his words are encouraging, what little of them Baze hears with his thighs presses around his ears, his body half-balled up around him.

He's still trying to pray.

Which should be less erotic than it is, because it takes Baze back, makes him formulate absolutely ridiculous fantasies where they could have been Guardians together, hiding into one of the storage rooms, desperate to get their hands on one another, as Chirrut is desperate now, kicking with his heels and gripping intermittently with his knees, pulling at Baze's hair, trapped by his hands on his hips.

"Ai- your beard- _Your beard-_!" stands out particularly--almost a sob as Baze experimentally scrapes it against his thighs and Chirrut stammers around his mantra in a way that's so profoundly filthy that between that and the rosy fantasy of Chirrut's face on a mythical forbidden teenaged sweetheart who could have actually liked or found a use for him in his pride and imperfection as a teenaged guardian, Baze feels himself come in his suit for all his self control, a wash of greater guilt and shame.

He's still imperfect.

A guardian should have self control. Discipline. The ability to withstand both pleasure and pain.

He is not a guardian.

Somehow Chirrut has bypassed that, too, has given himself over so fully to pleasure it looks like an entirely new form of religion, running his hands through Baze's hair. It's something of the way he looks, the raw, open gape of his mouth. There are tears in the blind man's eyes as clammy coldness builds between Baze's thighs and he tries not to squirm, bobbing and scraping between Chirrut's trembling thighs, Chirrut's breathing choking more than his own.

He lasts a little longer the second time at least, with Baze's mouth bobbing on his slick cock, and with slightly more warning.

" _I'm- I'm one with the force-! I- The force is- Ah-! AAH!_ "

He still comes so hard Baze chokes. Coughing. Slopping mess all down his chin. Chirrut almost catches him in the eye- how can one man possibly have that much liquid in him on a second round? Baze wonders, slightly bewildered, pumping him with a hand to work him through the aftershocks while he coughs.

Chirrut pants in great, heaving gasps, sobbing in his completion before he catches and flops onto his back with a breathless laugh, a helpless little moan.

" _Oh_."

Baze catches his breath back finally, moving to lick dutifully at the mess all along Chirrut's belly.

Chirrut lets him, eyelids fluttering, fumbling at Baze's tangled hair before he realizes Chirrut's actually trying to keep it out of the mess.

"Warm?" Baze grunts, close to done

Chirrut's chuckle is a weak thing, sheepish.

"Aah."

His hands come up, covering his eyes for a moment. Chirrut lets out a heavy breath. It takes him a moment to find his words, stifling a laugh.

"Protector, I could climb a mountain to bathe in its ice and _still_ be warm from you," Chirrut breathes curling onto his side and cupping his hands over his ears with a little whimper of afterglow, basking.

Baze smiles despite himself, safely, knowing the other man will never see it. Chirrut in lounging pleasure could be another statue, flowers blooming in the crags and corners of his body, head ripped back to the sky. 

Chirrut goes back to muttering his mantra, flush still burning all along his chest and back.

Baze rolls onto his side, passes Chirrut's dirty towel along his body, each pass getting fresh shudders.

Chirrut mutters for a long time.

The room above them has gone silent.

"...you're beautiful too, you know," Chirrut blurts in the same matter-of-fact, steady way he says his mantras, lowering his hands after what seems like an eternity. Enough time for Baze's side to be cold and slightly numb from the hard chill of the floor.

Baze blinks. Remembers what he said.

"...right." He mutters. Chirrut loves making jokes about the look of things.

Chirrut frowns.

"I also did this because I wanted to. You are not alone," the blind man says sharply.

Baze says nothing.

They are perhaps the last two surviving repositories of the knowledge of the Guardians of the Whills, though Chirrut doesn't know it. He thinks he knows better than Chirrut how alone they both are.

"You- Call to me. In the darkness," Chirrut continues, head turning back and forth, trying to get a lock on him, "Are you- Hey! Are you even _listening_ to me?"

"I can hear you."

"Oh."

Chirrut pulls his legs up underneath him, feeling along the ground, something frustrated, feverish in his face.

He's quiet, his face working.

"You believe in nothing," the blind man blurts, "so I can't explain it-"

"I never said I believed in nothing."

Chirrut stopped with his mouth half-open. Closed it, his lips pinching into a line.

"You don't...believe in the force-"

"No."

"Then you won't understand so be quiet! You believe in nothing!"

Baze's knuckles tighten.

If Chirrut wants silence, he can have all the silence he could ever need.

Chirrut seems restless. Frustrated, sightless eyes darting back and forth, color burning in his face.

"I am not _lying_ to you-"

Baze snorts despite himself.

" _What?_ What are you laughing at?" Chirrut demands, cutting off.

"I've seen your stall. Will you tell my future now? Using the force?" Baze replies, evenly.

To his surprise, Chirrut's face colors. He doesn't have a quip. Just looks lost, mouth slackening.

"The force is _real_ ," Chirrut says with such grief and feeling it softens a bit of what Baze wanted to say. Chirrut's hands grip at his rag, "the future is...difficult. The force is real. I'm one with it. I'm one with the force and the force is with me. _I'm one with the force and the force is with me-_ "

Baze sighs through his nose as Chirrut babbles. He thinks of getting up and leaving.

"-it _sent you to me!_ " he stammers, on the end of his prayer, out of nowhere, weirdly desperate, wringing the fabric with his hands, "I _know_ it did."

His whole face turns towards Baze, eyes not quite fixed on him, something accusatory in his demeanor.

"...You will never believe me."

Baze is quiet for a long time.

"No," he agrees finally, "Not about this. I don't believe in a cosmic force bringing people together."

Chirrut's hands grip and clench. His whole jaw is tight.

"I believe each person makes a choice," Baze continues.

" _And how different is that?_ " Chirrut snaps, "It's the same thing! You believe in nothing!"

"One allows me to choose. You."

The words stopper up in Baze's throat.

_I chose you._

Chirrut is much too silent for much too long, staring off sightlessly into space. He too seems at a loss.

His hands are twisting, wringing at his damp towel, twisting it into a whip tail.

"...Who are you to say what's real and what isn't?" Chirrut hisses finally, still clearly angry.

"Then who are you to?" Baze asks far more softly, saddened when all that does is make Chirrut's face twist.

"I _believe_ in the force." Chirrut growls.

Baze says nothing, reaches for him, touches his face. Chirrut flinches. Grimaces as Baze soothes his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

"Îmwe..." he murmurs, smoothing a hand over Chirrut's short hair. Chirrut twitches, doesn't quite flinch this time, proud mouth still worked into a tight line, his chin like a little fist.

"Îmwe..." Baze repeats, touching his cold cheek, "It's alright."

Chirrut shudders, doesn't quite lean into it, doesn't quite pull away, sightless eyes turned to the floor hard.

"It's- _No._ You _use_ it. I can feel it," Chirrut says, "You feel as I do. You know things-" he breaks off, slapping the floor angrily with both palms, "It _isn't_ luck and you know it! You could be my equal and insist instead on denying-"

Chirrut's muttering now, face twisted up in that hard, unyielding core of him, unraveling, so Baze, who has known what it feels like to lose faith, fears suddenly, even as he fears Chirrut happening on the truth.

"It can use what it wants to," Baze says quietly.

Chirrut's head tilts, frowning.

"I don't believe in the force," Baze clarifies, "But if the force is supreme...if it is what you say it is... it could use anything. Including non-believers."

Chirrut's shoulders draw up for a long moment.

Then...almost imperceptibly relax, his face smoothing under Baze's touches, circling the outer cartilage of his ears, rolling it gently in the touches of his fingers so the other man's face gets almost dreamy.

"All is as the force wills it," he whispers.

"Nothing supreme survives by the faith of others," Baze mutters, close enough that he can smell the heat and the oil of Chirrut's skin.

"Sentients do," Chirrut retorts , just to be stubborn.

"Sentients are not supreme," Baze says quietly, slowly, working it out as he says it, "They are...blinded by passions and duties. Many things rule sentients. The force too, perhaps, if that is what you believe."

"If a _thing_ is stubborn and doesn't want to acknowledge what made it, then it is blinder than I am," Chirrut retorts back, not quite forgiving him, still a little churlish.

Baze closes a hand over his, thinking that Chirrut is certainly more fragile than he seems, and that faith has need of a protector.

He raises the knuckles.

"Then we guide each other."

Chirrut's chin tips up.

"The _force_ guides me."

Baze snorts despite himself, kisses the rough of Chirrut's knuckles.

" _The force_ told you to seduce a strange man off the street over the course of months?"

"I would have seduced you a lot sooner if you weren't so consistently bad at it," Chirrut retorts, sounding more like his own petulant self.

Baze laughs again, surprised.

"You don't even know what I look like," he mutters, passing his eyes over Chirrut's unselfconscious form a little ruefully, wondering if he was ever so flawless even at his peak of faith.

There isn't much to seduce.

Chirrut scowls.

"...I know a broken man with the heart of a star when I see one," he says firmly, "I know when a person carries a burden with them wherever they go and waits for it to crush him. I _know_ when the force guides someone and they refuse to see it and walk deeper into the darkness in their refusal."

Chirrut slapped a palm against the floor angrily in emphasis.

"Don't think for a moment that having no sight makes me _stupid_."

"Not stupid," Baze agrees, loosing Chirrut's tightly curled fingers, kissing the chapped webs of his fingers, "But occasionally foolish."

Chirrut's face is thunderous, closed off again.

"The force will not fail me," Chirrut replies. Stubborn.

Baze says nothing, kissing the rough, chapped skin of his knuckles until some of the hardness smoothes from Chirrut's features.

Chirrut can believe what he likes.

He's lucky, Baze thinks privately, to have met him, even if he's foolish and ready to be murdered by faith in a thing that cares nothing for him.

" _I_ will not fail you," he says very quietly, caution heavy in his heart even in saying such a thing, even as he's kissing a hard palm.

Chirrut's brow works for a moment, creasing hard like this pains him, but he doesn't reply, passing an absent hand over the front of Baze's jumpsuit.

He seems surprised when Baze makes a noise of discomfort, and he finds the wet there.

Chirrut blinks, then snorts, pushing lightly at Baze's shoulder, voice flat.

"Go _home_ , Protector. You've soiled your armor." He mutters.

Baze gives a grunt.

"You will be in the market tomorrow?"

Chirrut's lips turn upwards slightly at the corners.

"If the force wills it."

Little shit.

"If you don't freeze overnight in the Force's arms," Baze replies drily.

Chirrut laughs abruptly, patting at him, at his arm, his chest.

"Yes yes. My neighbors would complain," he mutters.

A beat of silence lingers between them for a moment, Baze's hands tight on his repeater. Chirrut's sightless eyes turn to the floor, smile faltering, drooping.

Before he can think better of it, Baze turns his chin up with a thumb, and kisses him, unhurried, without the desperation of earlier, lingering for a long moment with his thumb on Chirrut's cheek. He can feel the surprise melt away under his lips, the way Chirrut's part under his even with the taste of his own salt on Baze's tongue.

He follows the line of Chirrut's cheekbone in the dim lighting, the color all washed out of his face, the shapes of his ear delicate under his fingers, his hair a pleasing bristle. Chirrut twitches again, leaning in to the touch, foreheads pressed together.

"Rest well, my friend," Baze whispers.

He's never had much opportunity for the etiquette of one-night-stands, or of experimentations with friends, but thinks perhaps--just _perhaps_...

Chirrut sighs out, the noise soft, half against Baze's cheek.

"The force of others be with you, Protector." He murmurs.

Baze swallows his fears, forces a truth out in a blurt.

"It's- Baze, actually. My...name."

For a second he thinks Chirrut's going to understand, fears he'll realize what he's really done, but Chirrut's whole face goes from defeated and resigned to bright, his hands coming up to touch Baze's face, touching him.

"Baze," he repeats slowly, like it's something to be tasted, " _Baze._ "

There are many Bazes in the city, Baze reminds himself.

Chirrut's smile brightens a little more, a little wicked and too bright, rubbing his thumbs down the texture of Baze's beard, wordless for a long moment.

"I will teach it to _all_ of my neighbors."

Baze stifles an unbidden choke of laughter. 

" _Don't._ "

"Won't we?"

There's a challenge there, something very close to fragile even as it's defiant. Insistent.

Baze hesitates, and takes his hands.

"...On...cold nights," he says finally.

Chirrut's smile is radiant, as glowing as a child's.

" _On cold nights_ ," He repeats, like it's a promise.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm EgregiousDerp on tumblr too~
> 
> Come watch me yell about not being able to finish things, and turn everything into terrible jokes.


End file.
